A New Chapter Begins

Sensing the end of Maximilian Schwarzmüeller's React Native - The Practical Guide on Udemy, I began thinking ahead to my next mountain to climb in the last few days. This is always a tough decision, as I know it will dictate how the next couple of weeks will be for me and my studying, and making the wrong decision can be a big blunder. I've probably exhausted any audience I might have by my negativity about this last course I just finished up, so I won't go into much detail, but this would be a prime example of this type of blunder. Before taking Max's course, I had just taken 2 courses in a row by Stephen Grider, one on JavaScript which was also by Colt Steele, and one on React. While I really like Stephen Grider and he's quickly become one of my favorite instructors, I felt like I needed a break from hearing his voice and wanted to try a course by someone else. React Native has been something I've been wanting to learn for quite some time now, so instead of taking a React Native course by Stephen Grider, which was available, I went with a course by Schwarzmüeller, instead. If, in that moment of decision, I could go back and choose the course by Grider, I would do it in a heartbeat. I learned so much in Max's course, but there was a lot I found undesirable in the course and wouldn't recommend unless the person was already very familiar with React Native and comfortable with a really quick pace.

I definitely didn't want to make the same mistake twice in a row. There's still a lot to learn about React Native for me, so part of my decision was thinking about going to Grider's course on React Native. After looking it over and thinking about it, I really wasn't very excited by the idea of taking another React Native course right now. It is a really useful and used technology in the industry, and I see the value in learning it, but I just wasn't that impressed by the workflow. I know I will come back to this course eventually, and probably not that far off in the future, but for now, it was time to revisit another area of deficiency in my repertoire. I feel pretty good with React, but always have more to learn. Redux is still a problem child for me and could definitely use some work in that area. Stephen has an advanced React course which I think could be really useful. I need work on Node as well, and thought about taking a few different courses in this area. My main focus was finding an instructor that would be a stark contrast from what I just put myself through, and the answer kept coming back to Andrew Mead. Andrew teaches in a way that is very clear to understand; he takes his time with concepts, tests for understanding, and explains every single move he makes, sometimes to a fault. There are 2 of his courses I'm really interested in: one on NodeJS and the other on GraphQL. It was a tossup, but I decided I would go with the course on GraphQL and learn something that's fresh and fun. GraphQL is really interesting to me and I know this is something I'll be excited to come home and learn every night, helping to renew my motivation that's been on the decline up until the last week or so.

I started the course last night, but really only got through the introductory module, which just covered some of the basic setup and installation instructions of stuff I've already set up and installed. He did go through the idea of GraphQL on a very macro scale, but didn't go into much detail on anything. Today, I got to cracking on the first main module, which is just an introduction to GraphQL. Now, this isn't the first course I've taken on GraphQL; in fact, I already have about 12 or 13 hours of coursework logged on the subject. Still, revisiting these fundamentals is really important to building a solid foundation to grow on, so I paid full attention. First, we covered some really basic ideas, like how to import and export variables from one file to the next using babel and node, which was a little too basic, but I still learned a thing or two that I didn't know before. Then, we explored what a query looks like in GraphQL and how to use the Yoga playground, which again, I was pretty comfortable with already. We then started building our own query with resolvers. This started getting out of my comfort zone and on to some concepts I had definitely come across, but didn't fully understand. So far, the pace is such that, coming from Max's course, I feel like we're moving in slow motion, which is perfect. I wanted to take a course I could keep up and not feel like I was drowning in information constantly and this is precisely that. There is still a lot of information being given, but it's being presented in a much more manageable way. I have a feeling I'm going to walk away from this course feeling really good about GraphQL. So far, I'm loving Andrew's style and look forward to taking some of his other courses.

Until tomorrow!